Happy Independence Day, Argentina! And happy birthday to Paul Merton and Tom Hanks.
Two big stories
Murdoch Papers hack phones
The Guardian has the story of Murdoch titles doing dodgy things with mobile phones – and it backfiring on them to the tune of at least £1m. There are clear links to current Conservative communications chief Andy Coulson.
There’s an awful lot of this story on the Guardian’s site – including an interview with hack victim Lib Dem MP Simon Hughes.
I hope this story has legs. This was shoddy journalism that should have serious consequences.
Darling’s banking reforms attacked
The FT looks closely at yesterday’s announcements about how the government will regulate banks in future. Says Vince Cable:
“almost all of the important recommendations” made by Mr Darling would not happen until after the next election, rendering the white paper the equivalent of a “living will for the chancellor”.
Two must-read blog posts
Today I’m picking this story about Leominster’s MP Bill Wiggin for no other reason other than Leominster (pronounced Lem-ster) was the town where I did half of my growing up, and it doesn’t get mentioned very often. And Bill Wiggin is the MP I wrote to urging him to vote to equalise the age of consent for young gay men, an age ago. He responded after the vote to tell me that I would no doubt be pleased with the result, as it passed. He neglected to mention voting against the measure.
And I rather enjoyed this rant from Bracknell Blog about the irritating self-service tills many supermarkets are introducing. I find them irritating, because having been a cashier in a supermarket, the self-service tills are much slower at reading barcodes than real checkouts.
On LDV later today
It’s Thursday, so look out for our regular Question Time open thread. The programme is on BBC1 at the usual time of 2235, but is also available on a one-off basis live at 8pm on BBC3.
I’ll also be bringing you two pieces on the LGA conference last week.
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Cameron is beginning to look seriously vulnerable – he’s lost Andrew Mackay, George Osborne is under pressure, and now Coulson has failed to respond to the Guardian’s direct enquiry asking whether he knew about this widespread criminal behaviour on his watch at the News of the World. Maybe its only the presentation of the nasty party which has changed?
As a deeply anti-social and impatient person I *love* self-service tills. Once you get used to the fact that the “bagging area” has a weighing facility designed by NASA to detect the mass of space dust in zero gravity, they’re fantastic. I dread having to gurn insincerely at cashiers at places that don’t have them.
Best of all, most people can’t seem to get on with them so there are never queues.
Phone hacking is not merely “shoddy journalism”, it is a crime. We need to wake up to how easy it has become (not just for the government) to eavesdrop on our private communications. All MPs should encrypt their e-mail at the very least, otherwise how can their constituents be sure of being able to report problems with confidentiality?
Heads must roll at News Group. And why are the police being so pussy-footed about bringing charges? This whole thing stinks.
A full set of links to all the articles is at the bottom of the liveblog here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2009/jul/09/murdoch-papers-phone-hacking
Worth mentioning that the police failed to inform many of the victims that their phones were tapped, including John Prescott!